Generally speaking, end users of the Internet connect, via any available infrastructure, to an ISP or like Internet gateway. The Internet, although being a mesh transport network, is used for most application purposes as a star-configuration with large amounts of processing taking place at central locations. Generally, the Internet is based on the client-server connection model, as opposed to peer to peer.
The client server configuration has a number of disadvantages. First of all, an Internet service provider has to make available a capacity that can cope with peak time use at the servers centers. Such a capacity requires a large initial investment and regular and large scale growth both as the number of his customers increases and as the average amount of use per customer increases. Furthermore, each increase in capacity only increases the demand per customer, since an improvement in performance encourages users to make use of capacity hungry features, such as multimedia and virtual reality, which may not have been realistic before the capacity increase.
In addition, the Internet service provider is required to set up dedicated servers and server farms for different kinds of services, for example e-mail servers, web-servers, perhaps even more specialized servers such as a juke box server, and this only adds to the investment required. Furthermore, all of these services have to be integrated with each other, with a central control and with billing servers and other functions. Integration involves both time and cost, and is not restricted to set up of the initial system. Rather integration has to be carried out whenever new additions are made to the service provider's overall system or whenever upgrading of existing features is provided anywhere on the system.
Considering standard client server connections over the Internet in greater detail, the Internet generally speaking routes digital data packets over nodes to an intended destination. Each node, usually a router, has a unique IP address which is to be used by other routers to locate it. An Internet user is generally connected to the network via an Internet-Service-Provider (ISP) or via an Internet Point-Of-Presence (POP). The ISP has a domain, within which the user is allocated an individual identity, and the ISP enables the user to communicate over the Internet by allocating him a temporary IP address. The user may use known static IP addresses, or domain names which relate to such IP address, to connect to servers and web sites, but in order to connect to remote users, he has to know their temporary assigned IP address in advance—which in most case is practically impossible.
Recent developments in Internet use include messaging systems such as ICQ, Yahoo messenger and Microsoft's .Net system. Broadly speaking, in these systems, a user is assigned a username. The user is required to log into a central server and submits his current IP address, which is placed in a table along with his user name. Other users are able to communicate with him by submitting his user name and obtaining his IP address from the table. An individual message is then sent directly to the respective IP address. The messaging systems can support text, voice and video communications.
The messaging systems have the advantage that a high powered center is not required. The center is required to deal with nothing more than a single IP lookup request for each respective communication. However, it has the disadvantage that it requires a general purpose computer as the terminal device & the usage of the messaging system's application proprietary address translation protocol. The terminal device is required to make IP lookup requests, interpret the results and use the results to address data packets that it is able to generate. Furthermore, due to the absence of system billing mediation, such messaging systems do not have the ability to charge users for the service. Furthermore, users are identified by their “nick names” which makes it almost impossible to access a person unless the user is familiar with the addressee's “nick name”, unlike a known phone-number for example,